Calvin leaned forward. "And if there's no replacement vehicle of the right capacity available?" Anna did not attempt to charm the difficulty away. "Then the dealership has to notify you immediately, and the contract sets out the remedy rather than pretending there will always be a vehicle waiting. I asked Peter not to promise something he couldn't control. I would rather you know what happens on a bad day before you pay us to handle a good one."
Gloria studied her. "Have you ever had a customer walk away because you were too honest about a limitation?" "Yes," Anna said. "A contractor wanted a delivery date we couldn't guarantee.
I told him that, and he purchased elsewhere. He came back the following year because the other seller promised a date and missed it." She shrugged slightly. "I wasn't pleased to lose the sale, but I didn't regret telling him the truth."
Emma turned to a page of scheduled deliveries. "The first campus term starts before all fourteen vehicles will be fully integrated," she said. "We can rotate the current fleet and put the new units into service in phases, but I need dates we can build driver rosters around." Anna explained the proposed sequence: a first group after inspection and registration, a second group after fleet preparation, and the remaining units in time for the subsequent campus additions. Every stage carried a documented acceptance window rather than a ceremonial date chosen for photographs.
"If the manufacturer changes the allocation, I call you when I know," Anna said. "Not when the trucks fail to arrive. We build the schedule together, and we adjust it together." Emma wrote a note in the margin.
"That's the first sensible answer I've heard from a dealership in months," she said. Anna smiled, but Gloria could see the effort behind it. She understood what it cost a salesperson to resist the easy promise of everything going perfectly.
They broke briefly for coffee. While Calvin stepped out to answer a driver, Gloria looked across the table at Anna. "Did you ever imagine you would be managing the showroom a week after we first met?" Anna shook her head. "I was hoping to make a decent impression. I certainly wasn't expecting a promotion, and I wasn't expecting your son to walk into the middle of that confrontation."
"Neither was I," Gloria admitted. She looked down at the contract binder. "There is something you should know. When I first walked into that showroom, I wasn't trying to see how the employees would treat the owner's mother.
I was trying to buy vans. But once Derek started acting the way he did, I decided I wouldn't use Malcolm's name to make him stop. It shouldn't take a family connection to be treated decently."
Anna nodded. "I thought about the first day a lot," she said. "I wondered if I should have stepped in sooner. I was at the printers, and I heard the catalog hit the floor. By the time I reached you, the barrier was already going up."